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Come together and seize the moment: Nextracker CEO Dan Shugar has never been more excited about clean energy

Come together and seize the moment: Nextracker CEO Dan Shugar has never been more excited about clean energy
Dan Shugar, CEO and founder of Nextracker (courtesy: Nextracker)

Shugar encourages collaboration ahead of his keynote speech at the interconnection event GridTECH Connect Forum

Sorry to ruin this for some of my fellow public school-educated pals, but Benjamin Franklin did not actually invent electricity.

He did take a keen interest in the force of nature after witnessing its effects in 1743. Although he had no idea initially how to harness and utilize electricity, Franklin’s curiosity would eventually lead to tremendous advancements in the field, including the first battery.

Dan Shugar, co-founder and CEO of Nextracker, reckons he first learned about photovoltaics in 1988, perhaps uncoincidentally as Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” climbed the Billboard charts. The process of turning light into electricity has fascinated him since; as he puts it, his excitement has continued unabated. You might say the current that once flowed through a founding father runs through him (metaphorically, I hope).

“I’m much more energized and excited about the industry today than at any other moment because we’re winning,” Shugar offers enthusiastically. “The technology is getting to huge scale and it’s delivering a tremendous amount of benefits in terms of cost reduction, energy security, energy independence, clean air, clean water, and unemployment.”

“It’s just good across the board, for all stakeholders, so I have never been more excited than today.”

Opportunities abound

Solar coaster? Dan Shugar is unfamiliar with the ride.

“For Nextracker, it’s been a very long period of sustained growth,” he beams. “We’ve had five or six years of 30% compound annual growth.”

He admits he’s heard the term thrown around before- often used to describe the ups and downs of working in renewable energy- but says he hasn’t experienced the gut-dropping bottoms. Instead, from his seat, the industry has been on a tear for decades, and now it’s primed to reach new heights.

“It’s about managing your business and really delivering value for customers and finding ways to develop profitable projects that are based on meeting customer expectations,” Shugar explains.

“Now there’s no going back, solar is unstoppable.”

– Nextracker CEO Dan Shugar

As renewable energy technology quickly matures, Nextracker’s CEO recognizes opportunities to lower customer costs while simultaneously getting more renewable generation onto the grid. Part of that equation includes securing a reliable domestic supply chain.

Nextracker is building capacity within major markets like North America to limit potential headaches. Global trade still makes a lot of sense in some cases, explains Nextracker’s CEO. “But we think local supply can make a lot of sense not just from a supply security standpoint, but also as our industry gets to scale.”

For example, the company is using California-made steel in its solar trackers, produced in one of the oldest continually operating mills in the country.

“What we found is that communities are much more accepting of welcoming products made locally,” reveals Shugar. “If their neighbors are making the material coming into the community, communities are a lot more accepting of those technologies landing there.”

It also helps when those communities can actually afford the technology, which hasn’t always been the case.

“I think the key (to growth) is that the cost of solar is falling so much,” Shugar suggests. “It’s come down by an order of magnitude in the last decade.”

California is on the right track, Shugar believes, especially when it comes to encouraging paired storage. “What’s happened with batteries is just staggering,” he adds.

One day he’s scoping graphs from the California Independent System Operator that show how batteries are keeping the lights on through the evening hours of summer peak. The next, he’s visiting a 250-MW battery plant, built in 11 months, and being told by the developer that it would be constructed even faster if they did it again.

The utility-scale battery site in question was built on just 11 acres.

“That’s the size of a medium-sized coal plant from yesteryear and it’s just unbelievable,” Shugar says.

Now that batteries are more affordable and available, Nextracker’s CEO believes they’ll be essential tools to maximize California’s solar and offshore wind generation, which already complement each other from a time of day and seasonality standpoint. He’s excited about growing electric demand as we electrify everything and reindustrialize as a nation.

“We need a tremendous amount of power,” he says, and the EIA agrees. “Solar plus storage dominates the projects that are in the queue, with about 7000 projects upcoming. About 80% of the queue by gigawatts is solar and solar plus storage.”

That presents ample opportunity for Nextracker, which provides integrated solar tracking equipment and software solutions for renewable energy projects. But they won’t succeed alone.

Join us at GridTECH Connect California, June 24-26, 2024, in Newport Beach, CA! With some of the most ambitious sustainability and clean energy goals in the country, California is at the cutting edge of the energy transition while confronting its most cumbersome roadblocks. From electric vehicles to battery storage, microgrids, community solar, and everything in between, attendees will collaborate to advance interconnection procedures and policies in California.

Teamwork makes the dream work

“We really think there’s both a tremendous need and imperative for us to collaborate and work together- utilities working with developers, developers working with the EPCs and coordinating with the utilities, manufacturers like Nextracker making the high-quality products within these communities- to be able to come together in a way where all the stakeholders are winning,” Shugar asserts. “We have to now. If we’re going to keep the lights on, we’re going to have to work together, and it’s a tremendous opportunity for all of us.”

Nextracker’s CEO believes the need for collaboration has never been more urgent, thanks to growth in demand and legacy generation assets going offline. He harkens to his early career as an electrical engineer in the transmission planning and substation operations areas for Pacific Gas and Electric.

“We know how to do this stuff,” he implores. “We think some of the orders by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have been helpful in decongesting the queue, and we feel there’s a real imperative for us to get this done.”

“Also, there’s an opportunity for more utility-owned generation to be added to the rate base,” he adds. “We think both are good.”

Shugar will take the keynote stage on June 25 in Newport Beach, California to spread his gospel at GridTECH Connect Forum. Will his enthusiasm for the industry be even stronger by then? Register and see for yourself.

“We’re incredibly appreciative of GridTECH Connect bringing together stakeholders from utilities to developers, manufacturers, and contractors in one place to really put issues on the table and solve these in a win-win way,” Shugar concludes. “Because we have a common set of needs at the end of the day, which is an opportunity to produce reliable power from renewable energy that’s made locally and installed efficiently in a way that lowers costs for customers, and that will help us fulfill our joint objectives.”

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